Lesetipp: Clay Shirky über den Buchhandel

Despite the spectacular breadth of available books created by online book sellers, many lovers of bookstores echo the ABA’s “Access to literature is at stake!” argument. In my experience, people make this argument for one of three reasons.

This first is that some people simply dislike change. (…)

A second group genuinely believes it’s still the 1990s somewhere. (…)

A third group, though, is making the ‘access to literature’ argument without much real commitment to its truth or falsehood, because they aren’t actually worried about access to literature, they are worried about bookstores in and of themselves. (…)

Schönes Fazit:

All of which is to say that trying to save local bookstores from otherwise predictably fatal competition by turning some customers into members, patrons, or donors is an observably crazy idea. However, if the sober-minded alternative is waiting for the Justice Department to anoint the American Booksellers Association as a kind of OPEC for ink, even crazy ideas may be worth a try.